In the week ended April 17, the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States totaled 734, compared with 760 in the prior week and 1,510 a year ago. Including 220 other rigs mostly drilling for natural gas, there are a total of 954 working rigs in the country, down 34 week-over-week and down 877 year-over-year. The data come from the latest Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) North American Rotary Rig Count.

The number of rigs drilling for oil fell by 776 year-over-year and by 26 week-over-week. The natural gas rig count decreased by eight week-over-week to a total of 217 and is down by 99 year-over-year.

Last week marks the second consecutive week with a drop of 25 or more rigs. The price is being paid by oilfield services workers like the 11,000 that Schlumberger Ltd. (NYSE: SLB) said last week it would lay off until demand and pricing improve. Since October 10, when the number of oil rigs working in the United States totaled 1,609, the number of oil rigs has dropped by 849, or about 53%.

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Crude prices rose about 8% last week to close out the week at around $56.14 on Friday. The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price for May delivery peaked just short of $57.00 on Thursday, after jumping by around $2 a barrel following Wednesday’s inventory report. Crude stockpiles grew by just 1.3 million barrels last week, helping to push prices higher. The cuts to working rigs are expected to lead to a drop of 57,000 barrels a day of oil production in May, the first drop since 2008.

Hedge funds — under the Managed Money heading in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Commitments of Traders report — added another 7,000 long contracts on NYMEX crude and cut short positions by 15,000 contracts. As of April 14, Managed Money holds 342,607 long positions compared with 104,051 short positions.

Among the producers themselves, short positions outnumber longs, 399,621 to 243,508, and positions among swaps dealers show 326,924 shorts versus 203,542 longs.

The states losing the most rigs last week were Texas (down 15), Oklahoma (down six) and North Dakota (down five). Louisiana added five rigs last week and New Mexico added two, the only states that posted gains for the week.

In the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the rig count dropped by six to bring the total down to 258. The Eagle Ford Basin in south Texas lost two rigs and reports that 123 are working, and the Williston Basin (Bakken) in North Dakota and Montana has 84 working rigs, down five from the prior week.

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As of Thursday, the posted price for Williston Basin sweet crude had risen from $32.94 a barrel in the prior week to $45.94 a barrel, and Williston Basin sour had risen from $23.33 a barrel to $41.33 a barrel. Eagle Ford Light crude sold for $53.25 a barrel, up from $47.25 on the previous Friday, the same price as WTI.

The price of gasoline increased over the week. Saturday morning’s average price in the United States was $2.446 a gallon, up about 2.2% from $2.393 a week ago.

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